Will it help to find out more about the content of the article? (eg the nature of the statistical data?)

Is the conclusion you drew, based upon one sentence? One assertion? Or the general flavour of the article? Any puns involved?

Is psychology a science? Is psychiatry a science?

In my experience scientific knowledge is certainly an aid to both.

I have heard aspects of both being described as "not an exact science".

There continues to be considerable debate and different schools of thought in these fields. Much of psychiatry is based upon intuition, some research, trial & error and thankfully some mature experince and good will from some caring people.

Is you interpretation based on some ambiguity of the language in the report? Something like "Researchers have found that 50% of Bristolians like bananas" ... where the 50% was intended to refer to the whole population, but could be interpreted to refer to each individual?

Does it have to do with the fact that the percentage of diagnosed split personalities in the U.S. and Europe differs to a great extent? nothing as complex as that. This really is a silly puzzle

By Arjun Rangarajan (Jun) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 06:48 pm:

Is the cure - a person? an animal? a thing (book? movie e.g. Gone with the Wind - a cure for insomnia ?) it is none of these

By Tony (E20) on Friday, January 14, 2005 - 08:22 pm:

Is you interpretation based on some ambiguity of the language in the report? Something like "Researchers have found that 50% of Bristolians like bananas" ...the report I read said that 50% of Bristolians are bananas where the 50% was intended to refer to the whole population, but could be interpreted to refer to each individual? again, nothing as complex as this

Did it have specific numbers yes that led you to believe that each person had one? personality? I am not sure what this means. I already knew that, except in the case of schizophrenics, one person had one personality, but...

but what I'm asking is did it say EACH and EVERY person has one personality, meaning that they must have found a cure for "split-personality"? it said nothing about personalities; it related only to people; it did not make any comment whatsoever about schizophrenia, nor anything else. It merely reported a fact.

did it have anything to do with the number of something else, compared to the number of people? no the number of a certain kind of people? yes - the article quoted the numbers of various kinds of people the number of chickens each person had? but for some reason forgot to mention this

By Arjun Rangarajan (Jun) on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 02:23 am:

Did it say something like "only every other person in the world is mentally sane"? no. It actually said very little.

An article published in a magazine refers to numbers of people in certain categories.

Among these categories, the relevant one is "psychologists" (though the people involved are a defined subset of the set of all psychologists).

If one is a silly woubit, it is possible to infer from this article that a cure for "split personality" disorder, or "schizophrenia", has been discovered - at least, as far as these psychologists are concerned.

The article itself makes no reference to schizophrenia, or to any other kind of mental or physical dysfunction. It simply enumerates the people in particular categories.

Were the two kinds of people men and women? the article did indeed enumerate the number of men and the number of women in the category "psychologists". However, the puzzle would work even had it not done this. People with mental differences? Physical differences? Age differences? Some other difference? nothing like this

different kinds of people? like with different occupations? different names? different nationalities? different races? different species? different net worthses? different genders? the order in which each person became US President?

Is your conclusion based on the number of psychologists reported? indeed Was this number very small? all numbers are relatively small, becuase most numbers are larger than they are Very large? no number is very large. See above. Would it help to get the exact number? it would not. The number was of an unsurprising order of magnitude. There was, however, a surprising element...

different kinds of people? indeed like with different occupations? yes - the article listed various "occupations", and gave a number of people who followed each one different names? no different nationalities? no different races? no different species? everyone enumerated in the article was of the species "sapiens" different net worthses? no different genders? yes, but irrelevant the order in which each person became US President? none of the people enumerated in the article was sufficiently lacking in intelligence to become President of the United States

Was the surprising element the value of this number when compared to the number from some other occupations? Any mathematical relations involved at all (such as division by 2, I somehow cant seem to get that out of my head)?

Was the surprising element the value of this number when compared to the number from some other occupations? no comparison whatsoever is involved Any mathematical relations involved at all (such as division by 2, I somehow cant seem to get that out of my head)? then keep it there, for you are assuredly on the right track

division by 2 relevant? only in the sense that division by 2 sometimes yields the fraction 0.5

By Arjun Rangarajan (Jun) on Saturday, January 15, 2005 - 03:30 am:

Oh too bad I have to run now. Hope somebody finishes this off...well, there is next to nothing left, and you have done the hard work. Lest anyone banned from Scottish puzzles should wander in and steal your thunder, I will post the...

***** SPOILER *****

On the website for the University of Durham (the one in England, not the one in America named after a bicycle) there is a set of interesting statistics, which you can see here.

In the University's psychology department, there are apparently 76.5 male students. Clearly, one chap at Durham had half a mind to study psychology, so the resourceful faculty devised a strategy to enable him to do both this and whatever other career he wanted to pursue. The guy was obviously schizophrenic, but they must have found a cure.

Thanks to all who took part. It will also be observed that there are 93.3 women in the philosophy department at Durham, but this is entirely understandable in view of the principle of the excluded middle.

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